


Have You Seen This Person?

by fallendarlings



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Depressed Steve Rogers, Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, bucky's favorite color is yellow you can't change my mind, he's still learning how to write with his right hand, left handed bucky, natasha and sam are good friends this is just really condensed and i didn't wanna go into detail, this is stevebucky but the romance is only really there if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 14:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20292952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallendarlings/pseuds/fallendarlings
Summary: Missing persons fliers start showing up in Steve's apartment. They have his face on them and they're written in Bucky's handwriting.





	Have You Seen This Person?

**Author's Note:**

> i've been having a lot of writers block so i just wrote this short thing based off a headcanon i had and i didn't go into a lot of detail on anything sorry i just thought it was cute and wanted to share okay

The first time it happens, Steve is coming home from a run. He runs more these days, longer and faster. Until sweat plasters his spandex clothing to his body and even his serum enhanced lungs burn with exertion. It helps, a little, when he feels useless. He can’t find Bucky. Not by himself, not with the help of Sam and Natasha and Fury. Not with the help of _Tony and Jarvis_. It’s as if the Winter Soldier had never existed at all. If you ignored the media firestorm and the various worldwide government agencies searching just as hard for him as Steve was. Only they don’t have any good interests in mind, not even the old US of A. They want him locked up and they want the key thrown away. 

Steve leans his head back against the door of his apartment and rubs his hands over his burning eyes. He doesn’t sleep very well. Even less now than when he’d come out of the ice and seen the war behind his eyelids every time he closed his eyes to rest. It’s no use trying though. He just lays in bed and stares up at the ceiling begging the God he’d ceased to believe in to please, _please_ bring Bucky back to him. 

He never does. 

So Steve swallows down the bitter tears- what right does he have to cry? He wasn’t the one tortured for seventy years. He runs. He takes down Hydra, one cell at a time; he looks for Bucky in every broad, dark haired man he sees on the street. If there’s one thing he’s always been good at, it’s never giving up even when all the odds are stacked against him. 

His mouth is dry. Five hours of running nonstop will do that to a person. Sam keeps trying to get him to give therapy a try. But Steve’s problems aren’t going to go away by talking to someone that might end up a security threat and running at least makes him so tired that his mind stays quiet sometimes. If it doesn’t, then he takes an evening jog too. He toes his shoes off and peels his shirt over his head as he walks into the kitchen, for the fridge full of electrolyte water but he stops in his tracks when he passes through the doorway. The window is open, curtains shivering in the breeze. There’s a piece of paper stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet shaped like his shield. 

Steve doesn’t own any magnets. 

When he snatches the paper and reads the words written on it in messy, unfamiliar handwriting, his knees buckle under him and he sinks to the freezing tile. A badly glued cutout of his picture from the Smithsonian exhibit takes up half of the page and beneath it- **HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? ANSWERS TO STUPID, STUBBORN IDIOT. Stop looking. You won’t like what you find.**

He presses shaking fingers to his mouth, and he laughs. 

That’s how it starts. 

***

Natasha strongly advises him to stop looking. And to move to a new, more secure location. 

Of course, because Steve is a stupid, stubborn idiot, he does no such thing. Bucky is _close_. Close enough that he’s been keeping an eye on Steve’s movements enough to know when he’s out of the house. He takes to leaving things on the rooftop that Bucky had shot Fury from, the one that has good sightlines to Steve’s apartment. Things like baked goods in plastic wrap and new clothes and little caricatures of memories of the two of them. Sometimes tear stained notes that say _I miss you, I miss you so much it hurts like every single punch I’ve ever had is all happening all at once, but to my heart. I miss you. Please come home_. They’re always gone the next morning when Steve goes to the roof before his run, but there’s never any reply. He’s not even sure Bucky is the one taking his offerings. 

He has the missing person flier under his pillow. It helps him sleep, a little. Comforted by the knowledge that Bucky touched it, Bucky wrote those words out, Bucky was _here_.

Sam comes over sometimes, usually just when the days are starting to blur together so much that Steve wonders if he’s even real or if this is all happening inside his head, still trapped in the ice. He’ll force Steve out of his shell, out of his thoughts. They eat takeout on the couch and ignore the patched bullet holes in the wall and slowly work their way through Disney movies. 

“I’m worried about you,” Sam will say, leaning forward earnestly. He always does things so fucking earnestly; sometimes it makes Steve want to scream. Big brown eyes staring deep into his soul, asking him to talk. Talk, talk, talk. Like there’s anything for Steve to talk about. “Just come to the VA, Steve. You can just sit in the back and listen if you want.” 

Steve is fine though. He’s just fine. 

He runs for eight hours in the pouring rain, his heart thudding just a little harder every time lightning hits the ground nearby and the hair on the back of his neck and his arms stand on end. 

That night he falls asleep on top of the covers, clothing soaked through to the skin, his hand shoved under the pillow to touch the flier, to remind himself it’s real. 

When he wakes, there’s a soft, sunflower yellow blanket tucked around him and a paper lying on his spare pillow, held in place by a shiny river pebble. The kind Bucky had always had an obsession with picking up, rubbing a smooth dent under his thumb, hidden in his pocket until he found a new one. 

The new flier has one of the caricatures he’d drawn glued to it- the one of Bucky scolding small Steve for getting himself into yet another fight. **HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? ANSWERS TO HARDHEADED BRAT. You’re not immortal, you asshole. Keep running like that and you’re gonna get pneumonia. That’s if you don’t get struck by lightning first. Self-preservation has never been your strong suit but this is just ridiculous. Stop looking. I’m not him.**

But Steve knows better, because that is _exactly_ the type of thing Bucky would say. There was a time in his life where he had resented the way Bucky lectured him like an overbearing mother but he would give anything to be shouted at in that voice again. He holds the blanket tight around his shoulders, pressing his nose into the thick material. It smells like gun oil and cinnamon. That’s what Bucky smells like now. 

It’s almost like having him here. 

***

Steve and Nat go to Virginia to raid what is supposed to be an abandoned Hydra facility. 

It’s not abandoned, it’s very not abandoned. 

“I thought you said this was supposed to be an easy in, easy out!” Steve snaps at Natasha, curled behind his shield to block the spray of bullets. When there’s a break he flings it out and takes out the first wave of assailants. They’re deep underground in a computer room and they have no backup. 

There’s been worse odds. 

“Stop complaining,” she shoves another clip in her gun and grabs the USB stick that she’d been downloading data onto. “Think of this as your opportunity to have a little fun. These guys probably worked at the facility in DC that housed the Winter Soldier. They must have vacated here when they had to abandon that post.” 

“Oh, fuck.” Steve tightens his grip on the shield. “You’re right. I love killing Nazis in the morning.” 

“It’s nighttime.” 

“That too.” He kicks down the door and tears his way through the facility and wonders what happened to the boy who didn’t want to kill anyone as he smiles when the blood sprays and the bones crunch beneath his fists and his shield. Violence is the only thing that makes everything go quiet anymore. Just him and death, hand in hand. He’d spent the first half of his life running from it, flirting with it. Death had given up on taking him and turned him into a reaper instead. 

It’s one in the morning by the time he gets home and there’s blood dried and crusted on every inch of his skin, soaked deep into his uniform. He turns the shower to the hottest possible temperature and sits down, his knees drawn to his chest and lets the spray pound on the back of his head and shoulders. The water is red as it swirls down the drain but it doesn’t stop him from falling asleep there on the floor of the shower. 

He knows Bucky came in the night when he wakes up because the water is turned off. He’s fallen asleep in the shower post mission enough times to know it doesn’t do that by itself. And there’s about nine gigantic fluffy towels piled on top of him, another one wadded up and wedged under his head. It should be concerning that he managed to sleep through it but his body has always known Bucky is safe. Bucky is where he can relax and be vulnerable. He groans when his joints crack painfully as he hauls himself up from the floor and steps out of the shower, keeping one of the towels wrapped around him. 

There’s a wooden chest sitting on the counter next to the sink and another flier. A printout of a news report from the night before, an image of him outside the Hydra facility, covered in blood and eyes burning in anger as he brutally beheaded a Hydra agent with the shield. The agent is blurred out but the headline asks _Captain America, National Hero or Violent Murderer?_. Beneath that, in Bucky’s new handwriting: **HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? ANSWERS TO GOOD TO THE CORE, JUST HURTING RIGHT NOW. You don’t have to paint the world red to avenge me, Steve. Try painting something else for a change. And for the love of god, take Wilson up on the therapy thing. Would it kill you to actually go to bed in warm, dry pajamas? PS more cookies please.**

***

He goes to therapy. 

Mostly because Bucky wants him to and maybe if he does it then one of these days Bucky will decide to lecture Steve in person instead of through comical missing persons posters that just poke fun at Steve spending the past year and a half searching for him. He hates everything about therapy at first, hates being forced to talk about things that make him want to go crash another plane. He ends the first few sessions by locking himself in random storage closets and sobbing for a good twenty minutes. The list of things wrong with his head seems to grow with each session- PTSD, anxiety, major depression. He has brand new bottles of specially engineered medicine for each. Doses high enough to kill a regular man to account for his metabolism. High enough that he feels every bit of the side effects. He sleeps too long and he’s nauseous _all the time_ and sometimes he bursts into laughter or tears for no reason and with no forewarning. 

It takes about two weeks of misery and adjusting doses but finally, _finally_, he starts to feel better. 

He buys canvasses and sets them up in his living room and uses the set of gorgeous watercolor paints Bucky had left for him, working on something every night before bed. It turns out that violence isn’t the only thing that can make his head go quiet. 

Things are looking up. 

Sam and Natasha agree that Bucky seems to be hinting that he’s getting ready to come home soon, to come back to Steve. So they help him put together a huge file of information on how Bucky should be regarded as the hero he is, not a threat. They present it to the right authorities and they testify and sit through days of court. When James Barnes’ name is cleared, Steve goes to lunch with his friends and celebrates and when he gets home that evening there’s another flier propped against his latest painting- a memory of a day at the beach, Bucky squinting in the bright sun, freckles across his golden cheeks. 

A picture of Steve in court with his hand on the bible. **HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON? ANSWERS TO BETTER THAN DA VINCI. I can’t possibly thank you and your friends enough for what you’ve done for me, Steve. I don’t think I’m ready yet, but I think I will be soon. I don’t mean to hurt you, you know I don’t. You’re the most important and I want to be sure I can trust my mind before I let myself near you. You’re not the only one in therapy. I miss you too, I do. But remember I’m watching over you. It’s the best thing I know how to do. See you soon.**

***

For three months, Steve keeps that paper folded in his pocket. It goes everywhere with him even though he’s long since memorized it word for word. He likes to pull it out and trace his fingers over that _I’m watching over you, see you soon_, likes the happy sparks it sets off inside his head. The heady, bubbly hope in his chest. 

What he’s not expecting is to wake up abruptly one morning to the very foreign scent of coffee and bacon already made filling the apartment. He stumbles out of bed so fast his legs get tangled in the comforter and he crashes to the floor but he’s on his feet and running out of his bedroom in seconds, his heart in his throat. It’s probably Sam. It’s probably Natasha. It definitely can’t be Bucky, it can’t be that easy. 

But Bucky is sitting on the countertop, his feet dangling a few inches above the floor. He’s in a bright yellow sweater and a pair of sweatpants that Steve had left for him on the roof so long ago, his hair is tied up in a messy ponytail. He flashes a shy smile at Steve when he skids to a stop in the kitchen doorway and hops down from his perch, holding up a small polaroid of Steve asleep, face half mushed in his pillow. “Have you seen this person? I heard he answers to my best friend. He might also respond to pipsqueak.” 

“You are such an _asshole_,” Steve chokes out and lurches forward, flinging himself at Bucky. The brunet catches him with a laugh, arms wrapping tight around him. Steve buries his face against Bucky’s throat, lips brushing against the pulse point. “Bucky. You’re here.” 

“Yep.” 

“You staying?” Steve pulls back just far enough to meet his gaze. _Please stay, please stay, please stay_. He doesn’t beg but he wants to. 

Bucky brings his flesh hand up to cup Steve’s chin, thumb running warm and callused across Steve’s shaking bottom lip. “Nowhere else I’d rather be, Sweetheart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on:  
Twitter: buckycried  
Tumblr: pressrestart / stevebuckyrightsonly


End file.
